Walking

When we stopped in El Paso on our way home from Houston, Michael decided it was finally time to walk! He is doing so well. He can turn and change direction, he can catch himself and not fall. We need to work on standing up on his own without holding onto anything. We have been praying for this for a long time. I will put up some video when I figure out how. :)

Jeremy's Birthday

This is my husband. He turned 33 years old on Friday. We had a fun day. Lynne came down and we grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch and played in the pool. Notice a theme for the summer? We all played some games with him on the computer. He found Tanks online and now our boys are pros at blowing up the other tanks. Does anyone remember this game? We used to have it on our computer growing up. Andrew loves to use the Hot Shower and the Air Strike and Jacob really likes the Large Ball. :)

Then we had Jeremy's favorite - pizza and wings for dinner. We found a place called Wings Over Broadway here in Tucson and they were really good. I made Devils Food Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and I think everyone liked them. The grown ups watched a movie after the boys went to bed. I think Jeremy had a fun birthday.

On Saturday we went to see Earth at the discount theater here in town and Michael loved the baby polar bears. He kept reaching out to Jeremy and squealing to make sure his Daddy was seeing them, too. Andrew loved the cheetah, Jacob seemed to like it until he fell asleep on Jeremy's lap. :)

Before Jeremy's birthday as part of a pre-celebration we went up to Mt. Lemmon and played. We found a great spot for a picnic and a place where the boys could play in the creek and behind the spot we went rock climbing. We had a fun time splashing, finding worms and throwing rocks. ( I need a little girl ). The boys helped gather wood for a fire and we had more hot dogs. :) And we had to stop at the Mt Lemmon General Store for some really yummy fudge.

It is nice to escape the heat and enjoy the water and pine trees completely free of cactus.

Thank you Kathie

This post is to show Kathie how much we loved her package.  It came Kath, and the boys had to play with everything right away. We wrote with the chalk and checked it out with 3D glasses. We colored the stickers and then placed them on Grandma Selim - who was a great sport - she even wore them to the movie we went to see. :) We played with the ball toy so much it is now broken and really none of us were very good at it.  :) We cut out a dinosaur from the coloring book.  I tried on all the clothes and most of them fit. I even wore one of the dresses to church yesterday and got several compliments. So, thank you, thank you.  It was a perfect summer package! Thank you for being such a nice and generous sister and Aunt! We love you so!

Father's Day

 I am a little behind, but we celebrated Father's Day partly on the day before. We got out the pool and played in the water. Jeremy broke out his new grill and we tried it out cooking hamburgers. The day was perfect and the hamburgers were great. I am all for buying Jeremy a gift that gets him cooking! We are loving the grilling he is doing for us. :) 

On Father's Day, the boys woke Jeremy up ( really he was awake due to all the very loud planning the boys were doing) with the 2nd Annual Father's Day Parade. Everyone has an instrument - Andrew on the guitar, Jacob on the recorder and Michael with the maracas ( which Jacob very cutely calls the ramacas) singing : It's a Parade, It's a Parade, It's a Father's Day Parade over and over until they get the appropriate response. :)  They presented him with the tie they had made him and with the cards and origami ties they had folded for him. We all got ready and attended a church meeting where Elder Anderson spoke (one of the Apostles of our church ) and a new stake was created. It was really powerful and we really enjoyed except Jeremy was battling Michael for half the time. We came home and had ribs and potato salad. I think he had a fun day. I called my Daddy and sang to his answering machine and even sent him an email. I still haven't talked to him - I love you Daddy. I hope you aren't avoiding me!

Summertime

So the month of June has flown by and we have now been in our house a month.  We have been busy playing hard and celebrating - Father's Day and Birthdays.  Our neighborhood has a connection to the Rillito River hike and bike trail. And it has been really fun to get everyone on a bike - or on the back of a bike in Michael's case - and go for a bike ride. We have take a bike ride to two separate parks near our house. One was a longer ride and the boys were great.   It is so fun to do it all together. Oh, and remember we live in a desert and there is no water in the Rillito River unless there has been a very large rain - ie Monsoon. :). And there has not been one, yet. We saw plenty of lizards and ground squirrels, though. And even a road runner. 

Photos

The living room and entrance to the kitchen with our crazy Jacob. You can kinda see the stairs in the background.

The living room during Family Home Evening with Jeremy pretending to be preoccupied with guitar. Why would he smile for the camera? 

Toy closet with bookcase in the back

Table with view of laundry room door on right and toy closet door on left and of course Andrew :)

The backyard with covered patio

I wanted to post some pictures of our new place. The upstairs still hasn't been documented, but here is the downstairs. We love the backyard. Grass is one of my favorite things about the new place. Something I really took for granted until we moved to Arizona. I love the floors, even though I sweep all the time now. We used to have really bad carpet. :) I love the toy closet. It is really close to the living room, but it can all stay in then when they are done. They do have some toys in their bedroom. I like our kitchen and am in love with our new fridge. I don't know if you can really see it in the picture.  It is one of the french door fridges with the freezer drawer on the bottom. We love the garage and being able to park our car away from the hot Arizona sun. And this way Jeremy doesn't get mad if I forget to lock the door, because I only have to remember to close the garage door.  I love that the laundry room is inside the house, inside of having to go outside. We can stash our shoes and bags in here, it doubles as our mud room, because you walk through here from the garage into the kitchen. Our favorite thing is the AC and the ceiling fans. It really makes summertime in Arizona livable. We are really happy here. 

Another Address!

We have had a roller coaster of a week and I think we finally are on pretty level ground. Last week right before we moved Jeremy accidentally flushed his phone down the toilet. He is so careful with his things, that this really threw him. And it has made communicating really difficult. Funny, now but really annoying. Then the toilet overflowed and had to be broken to get the cell phone out. Which resulted in a half day with no toilet and then a brand new one for a day before we moved.  Then we packed up the crib and a sleeping bag in our van and then Jeremy dropped me off to head to my last show and he went with the boys to pick up the keys to our new place.  He then went to the new place and there were people here cleaning it. So, they had to leave again, but they were able to get in later and set up the crib while frantically trying to keep Michael away from the stairs. My friend dropped me off at our new place - which was thrilling - and Jeremy gave me the grand tour of sleeping boys in their new rooms. Then the plan was to head back to the other place and pick up our bedding and some breakfast items. But, the car wouldn't start. So, we slept on the bamboo floors and one thin quilt. :) The next morning at 6ish, Jeremy takes the bus, which amazingly takes him to a walmart and picks up a new battery for us.  The boys of course wake up starving and I had one nutrigrain bar in the diaper bag.  Michael falls down the stairs. Jeremy carries the heavy battery in his backpack and thinks to pick up a box on nutrigrain bar, too and saves the day. We (Jeremy) gets the battery installed and we start the back and forth of moving within the city. We get  a good amount done with the seats out of our van. And then Emily, Armando, his kids and Lynne all come done to help with a truck and we get all the big stuff moved over. They were a huge lifesaver. Thank you, thank you! After they headed back to Phoenix, we tried to make a few more trips.  Moving is never very fun.  So we tried to take it slowly and not stress, but it would have been nice to have it all done in one done.  I slept many hours cleaning everything and piled all the extra boxes in one room like a trash pile.  One box was full of packing peanuts I had saved just in cased we moved far away.  Jeremy then takes the boys over to help him clean up the backyard and they discover the packing peanuts. Jeremy walks in, expecting a clean room and helpful children, and finds two little rascals diving and swimming in packing peanut pieces. The entire floor was covered. It would have been really funny if we hadn't been trying so hard to finish up and get out of there. And packing peanuts seriously resist being cleaned up! But, the keys are now turned in.  We are officially in the house on Babbling Brook and it feels so nice. We have been loving the backyard and especially the air conditioning. I will post about all our new favorite things with pictures soon.